5 Lead Generation Strategies To Consider For Your Campaigns

Quality lead generation is a crucial part of a marketing strategy. Continually evaluating what works and what doesn’t work, is essential if you are to optimise for success.

To be effective, lead generation strategies must do more than check off points on a ‘success tactics’ list. Successful approaches recognise that testing, evaluation and regular optimisation of current toolsets is required to continually drive quality traffic and generate valuable leads.

Below are some key tactics and approaches to consider in your campaigns, to enhance lead generation and help you engage the right audience.

5 Lead Generation Strategies To Consider For Your Campaigns

1. Create (and Promote!) Compelling Content

The importance of creating quality content; that delivers value and stands out from the crowd, cannot be underestimated. So consider your content (think: your blog, website, social posts, videos, guides and more). Does it deliver value to your best fit audience; addressing their challenges and providing next-step advice? 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus in an advertisement. So having appropriate content that educates, advises and helps your visitors, is the first step to encourage trust - and conversion.

However, as we explore below it’s also important to promote your content; distributing it through the right channels (paid and owned) for your particular audience, whether you're targeting a wider persona audience (as in an inbound marketing strategy), or taking a more account-focussed approach.

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2. Include Video in your Content, Marketing and Sales Approach

It has never been easier to create great video content, so why not use it to both attract and engage your audience?

From case studies to webinars and other more educational videos, to short social media clips - or even a quick recording in an email - video content can be used at all stages of the buyer’s journey. It can also be effective as a brief introduction to other content; to capture attention, generate trust and build personalised relationships - particularly when incorporated within sales conversations. As an example of video in action, tools such as Vidyard can help you to create and track engaging video content, designed to increase audience engagement and drive results across marketing, sales and customer support; including enhanced lead generation.

With more than 75% of Fortune 500 executives viewing video content regularly according to Forbes, it’s clear that taking a considered approach to video can be an important aspect of effective lead generation and lead nurture strategies.

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3. Promote your Content to the Right Audiences

With B2B lead generation it’s not necessarily volume that should be the priority but rather quality; it’s important to focus on generating quality leads - who fit your ideal buyer profile and have a good propensity to buy.

As mentioned above, promoting your (quality, buyer-focussed) content across the right digital environments to target those ideal buyers is important if you are to increase relevant traffic and leads. As a result, due consideration should be given to your promotion strategies. Good promotional activities to consider include:

Just as you consider the relevancy and targeting of your content, you must consider how easy (and compelling) it is for quality visitors to convert.

Over the past few years, lead capture forms, such as those placed on landing pages promoting relevant gated content, were an effective way to generate leads. However, form apathy and a reluctance to impart personal information is increasing. Today, visitors often click away before completing a form to access content.

However, conversational marketing tactics such as personalised chat, are changing the way marketers consider conversion and lead generation. According to Drift, B2B buyer expectations are changing; 85% of people want to get real-time messages from brands, and be able to answer them back using that same channel. Buyers today increasingly expect real-time answers to their problems; conversational chatbots provide the means to do just that; simultaneously building trust and engagement with your brand, while working as an on-page lead conversion tool.

5. Make the most of your workflows and sequences

Following up with the right content, for the right people, at the right time is a crucial aspect of effective lead nurture. Both your marketing and sales teams should be involved in this process. From a marketing perspective, nurture helps to move a lead further through the funnel. But from a sales perspective, nurture is also an important consideration to build a personalised rapport with good-fit leads.

Automating content nurture with marketing workflows, and later down the line (once a more personalised relationship has been developed,) with sales sequence emails should be a central part of any good nurture process.

As a basic outline,

Workflows are typically used by marketers to nurture earlier in the sales cycle; an automated email workflow might be triggered buy a lead converting on a piece of content, who would then receive emails (tailored at a persona level) through that workflow recommending appropriate next-stage content.

Sequences begin after a sales rep manually enrols a contact on a specific flow. Sequences are typically more personalised than email workflows; with HubSpot Sequences for example, it's possible to customise the timing and specific messaging of every stage of the nurture flow to tailor each email to that particular prospect and their challenges.

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Adapt Your Strategies For Continued Success

The need to focus on lead generation strategies has never been so important. Lead generation plays a part in every company’s marketing strategy, but to make it effective, you need to keep abreast of changing trends and adapt where possible.